where he died historiographer of the city in 1701. He had already constituted himself a historiographer and biographer general, writing the lives of kings, princes, and governors, and depicting the rise and fall of states, as fast as bookseller could commission, or printer put into type. Yet he is not a hack writer, but has an individuality of his own, and although his works are devoid of scientific worth, they served a useful purpose in their day by asserting freedom of speech. Their value is in proportion to the degree in which they subserve this purpose; the most important, therefore, are his lives of Sixtus V. and of Innocent the Tenth's rapacious and imperious niece, Olimpia Maldachini. Ranke has clearly shown that the former, which has done more than any other book to determine popular opinion regarding Sixtus, is mainly derived from MS. authorities of little value; which proves that Leti did not invent, but also that he did not discriminate.
Several other writers approached Leti's type, of whom Tomasi, the author of a very uncritical life of Cæsar Borgia, may be taken as a specimen. Two emigrant Italians, Siri and Marana, ministered successfully to the growing appetite for news and political criticism, soon to engender regular journalism; the former by his Mercurio, published irregularly from 1644 to 1682; the latter by his ingenious Turkish Spy. Ferrante Pallavicino enlivened the general dulness by his Divorzio Celeste, a conception worthy of Lucian, though not worked out as Lucian would have wrought it, and other satires which eventually cost him his life. Trajano Boccalini, nearer the commencement of the century, had treated political as well as literary affairs with freedom in his News from Parnassus, in which he professed to impart
